A Rosy Intarsia Foray

I took a break from my current wip (a baby pink jumper) to practice some colour work for the first time.

I recently posted about a jumper that I'm currently obsessed with making called "Santorini" by Rowan.  It's so amazing, but does require some pretty detailed intarsia work, which frankly, was way out of my knitting capabilities.  But I really want to make it so I've decided to do some practicing.

I found a really cute (free) pattern on Ravelry for a 5 colour intarsia chart which I thought would be perfect.  Luckily, being the yarn hoarder that I am, I already had 3 different pinks and 2 different greens.

I did a little bit of research and everywhere said that I had to use little bobbins which had a little bit of yarn from each colour of the pattern.  I didn't have any so I went all A-Team like and made my own from a bit of stiff card.

At the time, I had posted a pic of the bobbins and chart to instagram.  I was already 10 rows into it and finding the tangled mess of yarns a bit tedious.  A lovely lady (who is also going to be my knitting partner when I knit Santorini) told me she'd watch a tutorial once and they recommended just using short bits of yarn rather than bobbins.  I tried this and wow, it was sooo much easier!  I definitely would have struggled later on if I'd stuck with the bobbins!

After a few hours, I'd completed the little 30x40 chart.  Lots of lessons learnt and techniques discovered about intarsia knitting.  I got told once that you can carry the main yarn every couple of stitches so you don't have a huge bit at the back once you get to the other side.  Of course in the beginning I either 1. forgot or 2. didn't leave it slack enough.  By the end I'd got the hang of it pretty well.  It didn't stop the back looking like a hot mess though.

I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out, it's looks so pretty!  By no means perfect, but I think it's a pretty good first try at intarsia knitting :)

Santorini

No, not the idyllic holiday destination in Greece. Instead, this amazingly gorgeous drool-worthy jumper pattern in Rowan's latest knitting and crochet magazine (Number 53). I saw the picture on their website and completely fell in love with it. So much so, I went out and bought the magazine with no real intention of making it - but to perve over the pictures like a teenage boy reading Playboy. The more I looked, the more I had to have it. And when a particular online yarn store had a 15% discount on all Rowan yarns, I took this as a sign to make it. 

Only a couple of minor problems though:

1. I've never knitted an adult jumper before. 

2. I've only ever done basic intarsia with two colours. 

As you can see this particular jumper has about 20 bazillion colours, so one may say I need more experience. 

Experience, schmexperience. 

When I took up running I went straight in for a full marathon and totally disregarded any 5k, 10k or half marathons. No really, that's what I really did. 

So, I'm gonna do it. But seeing as the yarn was pretty darned expensive, I'm going to at least do a practice adult jumper. Just a basic, plain stockinette stitch but just so I know I can at least do that. Then maybe practice a swatch or two of intarsia charts involving more than two colours. Then I'll be ready. 

Santorini, here I come. 

My knitting so far...

So, I officially started knitting properly 2 weeks ago.  All I've done is practice swatch after swatch of different stitches.

Knowing how to already knit, purl, cast on and cast off helped quite a lot as this meant I could delve straight into the stitches.  First up was the 'rib stitch'.  Pretty easy and fun to do and looked quite nice.  I was actually pretty pleased as it was this first thing I'd managed to do that wasn't straight knits or a stockinette.

Amongst the moss stitch section in the book, there was a pattern for a little heart.  This combined the stockinette and moss stitch to give the appearance of a heart.

Next was the cable stitch.  I've always admired this stitch.  Yeah, looks a bit old fashioned, but I love how it looks on jumpers and scarves, so I was uber excited to try this one out (I'm so sad!).  I have to say I absolutely LOVED doing this and could do it all day long...I can't wait to do a project with cables :)

The most recent one I've done was actually the plain, ordinary stockinette stitch (the one you mostly see in shops where the item is flat and looks like lots of little V's).  But, seeing as my main aim is to knit a penguin jumper, including more than one colour was pretty vital to my learning.  I decided to start with the intarsia method which is the best to use for large areas of colour.  It was pretty confusing at first and my swatch wasn't amazing but seeing as it was my first go I couldn't complain.  Definitely lots more practicing before I get this one right!

I've also dabbled a bit in increasing and decreasing stitches.  I'm not going to post any pics of these for your own sanity as they are not interesting in any way.